be my partner. I have three hundred sequins myself, but that is not
enough because the punters play high. Come and dine at my house, and you
will make their acquaintance. We can play next Friday as there will be no
opera, and you may rely upon our winning plenty of gold, for a certain
Gilenspetz, a Swede, may lose twenty thousand sequins."

I was without any resources, or at all events I could expect no
assistance except from M. de Bragadin upon whom I felt ashamed of
encroaching. I was well aware that the proposal made by Croce was not
strictly moral, and that I might have chosen a more honourable society;
but if I had refused, the purse of Madame Croce's admirers would not have
been more mercifully treated; another would have profited by that stroke
of good fortune. I was therefore not rigid enough to refuse my assistance
as adjutant and my share of the pie; I accepted Croce's invitation.




CHAPTER XIV

I Get Rich Again--My Adventure At Dolo--Analysis of a Long Letter From C.
C.--Mischievous Trick Played Upon Me By P. C.--At Vincenza--A
Tragi-comedy At the Inn

Necessity, that imperious law and my only excuse, having made me almost
the partner of a cheat, there was still the difficulty of finding the
three hundred sequins required; but I postponed the task of finding them
until after I should have made the acquaintance of the dupes of the
goddess to whom they addressed their worship. Croce took me to the Prato
delta Valle, where we found madame surrounded with foreigners. She was